Video Dictionary 2.0

I've just been having a look at Wordia which is a wonderful new dictionary site. The entries are all video clips submitted by ... well anyone!
It's a bit like a YouTube video dictionary. I've just been having a quick browse and I love it. Great site for native and non native speakers of English. Also great collection of different accents. Even a few 'celebrities' thrown in!


Marvelous. Just love it. Read More..

How to Make Your Own Pronunciation Flashcards

The Flashcard Maker from CEO has been around a while, but it is one of those really good free tools that keeps getting better. It enable you to create and print your own flashcards which include text, phonemic script and images that you can type in and add. You can then use these for a range of activities in the classroom.

To create flashcards, the first thing you do is go to: http://www.cambridgeenglishonline.com/Flashcard_maker/ and choose the size of the flashcards you want to create. you can choose from either one A4 size card to 8 cards per A4 sheet.
Next, you can either draw your own image or select one from the image library.
To add an image you just click on the name of the image you want from the image library and click 'Apply' and it appears on the flashcard.

Next you can add your text and lastly, use the small phonemic typewriter to add the symbols.

Then all you have to do is click on print and you have your flashcard with phonemic script.

This is a great tool to use with EFL and ESL students.

• You can create simple flashcards with images and phonemic script of the nouns.
• You can get the students to create the flash cards themselves, as the phonemic typewriter also has sound so they can hear the phonemes as they type them.
• You can create some cards with just images, some with just word and some with just script and create a great matching activity.
• You can create flashcards with pronunciation mistakes and see if the students can spot them. You can create flashcards with one image and two different phonemic spellings and see if students can say the correct one.

If you really like this and think it's useful, there is even a version for iPad / iPhone which has lots of activities built in along with the ability for students to record and compare their own audio of their pronunciation. The app version isn't free though I'm afraid, but it is quite cheap at £1.79 in the UK. You can some screen shots here.

Hope you enjoy this and make some useful flashcards.

Here you can find more online pronunciation activities for EFL students

Related links:

• Text to Speech for EFL ESL Materials
• Pronunciation goes 2.0
• AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom
• iPad Apps for English Language Teachers
• Make Quick Pronunciation Activities
• Adding Phonetic Symbols to a Webpage
• Dictation goes Web 2.0

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

AudioBoo to Posterous: Audio Podcasting from the Classroom

For a while now I've been using Posterous in class and in training sessions to help show teachers and students just how easy it can be to create a blog.
(Basically, all they have to do is send an email to post@posterous.com with the title of the posting in the subject line and the text they want in the email along with and media as attachments and within minutes they'll get a link back to their published posting.)

No, though with the combination of Posterous and AudioBoo, the process of publishing audio directly to the web within minutes has just got easier too.
AudioBoo is a great free platform for publishing audio online. You can either go to their website and start recording straight away, or you can download a free app either to your Apple device or Android smart phone.
The site really does enable almost single click publishing once you have registered and set up your profile, but better than this it can be synced with a Twitter account, Facebook profile or blogging account so that any materials you record go directly to your network.

Publish directly from the classroom
I've found this really useful, particularly as I have the app installed on my iPad. This means that I can wander round class recording my students and then click a button and have their recordings published directly to my blog with seconds.
Then I can go to the blog later and build review tasks around the materials or students can go to the blog pages and comment on each others' recordings.

• Here you can see and hear what the result is when you publish direct to Posterous: My first AudioBoo to Posterous recording from iPad

With students
Having this ability to instantly record and publish students' speaking can be very powerful, particularly when using a task based approach, as students are often reluctant to review and repeat speaking tasks that they have already done once. However, knowing that their speaking will be recorded and published gives them the extra motivation to repeat tasks, focus on what they have learned and concentrate on achieving a level of accuracy.

Setting all this up is very simple. Once you have your Posterous blog account, register on the AudioBoo website, create your profile then go to settings and click on 'Post to other sites'. There you can decide which services you want to synchronise your AudioBoo account with. Then you just start recording and publishing.

AudioBoo and Posterous together can help you to build a powerful and versatile publishing platform for your students work and they are both free, so why not give them a try.

I hope you find them useful. Here you can find speaking activities to use EFL / ESL with students.

Related links:

• Skype Part 1 Recording Audio
• My Talking Faces
• Dictation goes Web 2.0
• Soundscapes from Soundtransit

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Scott Thornbury in Second Life Chat

For those who weren't able to attend Coffee With Scott Thornbury in Second Life on 26th April, you can now listen to the complete audio recording online at: http://blip.tv/file/2051173


During the interview Scott shares his opinions on a range of topics from IWBs, Twitter, Identity within SL and of course the past and future of Dogme.

If you enjoy listening to this interview, then come along on May 3rd 2009 and join our interview and have Coffee With Jeremy Harmer.


To find out more about other events and course organised by The Concultants-E check out their website: The Consultants-E

I hope you enjoy the interview and look forward to seeing you at the next Coffee With ..

Related links:

• Coffee With Scott Thornbury
  
• Filming in Second Life 1
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• More Second Life Tutorials
• Building in Second Life
• Lip Sync for Second Life
• Materials design for Virtual Worlds
• Teaching English in Second Life
• Second Life Teacher Training Videos

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

My Talking Faces

PhotoFace is a novel way to get your students talking, recording themselves and creating fun speaking images for class or homework assignments.

It's very simple to use. You can either upload your own image or use an image provided by the site.

You need to drag the position of the crosses so that they are over the features of the face.

Once you have done this you can alter the emotion of your image and click on the face and drag parts of it if you want to distort it.

Once the face image is ready you have a choice of ways to add audio. This can be done by adding a pre-recorded file, using text to speech or recording from your microphone or telephone.

If you use your microphone make sure you allow the site access it, then just click on record. You can record, listen and re-record as many time as you choose until, you get it right. I was actually very impressed with the sound quality. Once you have finished recording you simply need to email the link to the image to yourself or get your students to email the links to you.

• Here's the one I created using my own voice: Introduction to PhotoFace
• I also created a speaking sea shell using the text to speech: Sea Shell. So you don't have to stick with just images of people.
  

This is a great way to get your students to submit short speaking assignments to you by email. You can ask them to talk on a specific topic or give their opinions on on discussion tasks or contentious issues. It's quick easy and free, just a shame there is no embed code to enable you to put the talking heads into web pages or blogs.

I hope you enjoy playing with this and that your students get a lot of speaking practice with it.

Related links:

• Recording Skype Calls
• Creating audio-visual monologues
• Pronunciation goes 2.0
• Soundscapes from Soundtransit
• Video Dictionary 2.0
• Skype Part 1 Recording Audio
• Skype Part 2 Online Workspace
• 12 Second Video Clips for EFL ESL
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Video conferencing for EFL

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Recording Skype Calls

I haven't had a chance to try this yet as there isn't a MAC version available at present, but it does look like a very useful addition for anyone who uses Skype on a PC and wants to record calls. If you're wondering why anyone might want to do this I did write a posting for teachers on why this might be handy (See: Skype Part 1 Recording Audio) for creating your own audio materials etc.

Anyway, the Skype Call Recorder is free and at least according to their website blurb seems pretty good. It can record more than one stream at a time into separate files, which might be handy and then saves them as mp3.

There are some good installation instructions on the site too. You can download the whole thing as a zip file and at only 1.4 Mb, it seems like it may well be worth checking out.

Let's hope there's soon something like this for MAC users too.

Related links:

• Skype Part 1 Recording Audio
• Skype Part 2 Online Workspace
• Teaching Speaking in Second Life
• Video conferencing for EFL
• Send Free Video Messages
• Free Sounds for your Multimedia Teaching Materials

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Publishing Multimedia Projects

I'm always looking for interesting free tools for multimedia project work and I recently stumbled across a very nice one called Museum Box. It describes itself as providing 'the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box".

To use the site you need first to collect up your various media. You can upload videos , images , audio files, collect links and add documents.

All of these are uploaded to sectioned boxes, and each section of the box is a cube with 6 sides to which you can add your media.


When the box is finished you can publish and share the results and users can view the different sections of the box.
I think this is a wonderful idea and a great way of publishing your students' work. There are already quite a collection of boxes on the site, which students might find interesting.

The projects don't have to be historical, you could create a box with a section for each member of your class, or students could create boxes about their local city or environmental problems.

Hope you enjoy this and find it useful.

Related links:

• Advertisement Project
• Drama project tools
• Student Made English Advertisements

Best

Nik Peachey Read More..

Free Sounds for your Multimedia Teaching Materials

Digital sound effects can come in really handy for multimedia materials design projects and to inspire the imagination of our students.


Soundsnap is a really nice site which has a good size collection of free sound files. They are neatly catagorised and easy to search and you can preview them before you download them and most of them come in a variety of formats from wav, mp3, aiff.


You can register, but you don't need to.

Earlier this year I wrote a posting on my technology blog which looked at SoundTransit and I suggested a few teaching tips and ideas there, most of which would apply to these clips too.

See: Soundscapes from SoundTransit

Soundsnap is a really nicely designed user friendly site with a great collections of sounds.

Hope you enjoy these.

Best

Nik Read More..